Is love always beautiful? It will be great if it is, but life is not a romantic Disney story. Do not kid yourself into believing that every love story has a happy ending, because in reality, such perfection never exists. Indeed, love can sometimes be the cause of one’s downfall by turning his or her life into turmoil. Worst, it can scarily be used to justify one’s action in harming others. In The Jade Peony written by Wayson Choy, Sek Lung informs us of the existence of a Romeo and Juliet kind of tragedy through his narration of the love story of Meiying, his babysitter to whom he looks up. This forbidden love had unfortunately caused Meiying to be a criminal because her pregnancy had given her a reason to commit a sin towards the pure-hearted life growing in her womb. In the last chapter of the book, Meiying was discovered with “[…] two long knitting needles glinting between [her] legs” (Choy 275), showing her effort in aborting her baby. Meiying has bravely decided to put an end to the life of her own child using her own two hands because of the external and internal pressures surrounding her pregnancy. Meiying thinks that her pregnancy is socially unacceptable and it clashes with her interests.
Meiying is afraid that her pregnancy will be used as an instrument to marginalize her in society. First and foremost, the fact that Meiying is bearing a child outside of a marriage is totally unacceptable, especially in the traditional society of Chinatown back in Vancouver during
Explanation: When the war between China and Japan becomes more and more intensely, every Chinese people including the aboard hate Japan because Japan invade their land and attack their compatriots. But Meiying, who is a wonderful girl in Chinatown, has a boyfriend as a Japanese people. In that time, it is such a terrible thing because the Chinese people believe that people who has communication with Japanese is a traitor. Meiying keeps the secret for such a long time but
Love should be born and live in fields, just like wild flowers. Love needs to be nurtured by water, with no concern about where and when the next rainfall will take place. Love needs to allow nature to take its course and trust in the sustenance that its surrounding provides. However, love refuses to take the easy path. Instead, love decides to live in kitchens alongside irritated cooks, dirty walls and screaming infants with impatient mothers. Clearly, love would be better off without concerns, growing in a field like an iris, patiently waiting for the next rainfall. However, love chooses to exist in chaotic environments filled with discontent and discord.
Ever since the beginning of time, love has played an enormous role among humans. Everyone feels a need to love and to be loved. Some attempt to fill this yearning with activities and possessions that will not satisfy – with activities in which they should not participate and possessions they should not own. In Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker encounters an emotion some would call love but fits better under the designation of lust for a woman. In contrast, the speaker of Robert Herrick’s poem, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” urges virgins to marry, to make a lasting commitment in which love plays a
In contrast to these fairly pessimistic views on love, the author describes an instance in which a couple found true love. Mel tells an anecdote of an old couple that was admitted to the emergency room after a very bad car accident. The two people were wrapped up in full body casts, and as a result they could not see each other. Mel noticed that the old man was very sad, even
| |of forbidden love and the quest to keep it alive. The reader seems to |
Sacrificed the truth, beauty and the right to think, happiness and comfort is just indulgent, it is the discomfort brought by the misery, responsibility and the bonding give us the weight of life. The world is full of people who try hard to gain happiness, and we all have at least one time the idea of living in a perfect world, a world without pain, without misery, without getting old and without cancers. We always ignored the importance and the beauty of uncomfortableness, just as a quote in this book said, “Stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand”. After read this book, I started to be more objective at those bad things I used to hate, to understand the significance of art and to be grateful to this imperfect world we are
One of the overarching themes that spanned over the many books we read over the semester, was the nature of love and the search for meaning. Love is an inherent aspect of humanity, and while it is an often inexplicable and complex sentiment, it is intrinsically connected with mankind's search for meaning in life. Love often leads a person in directions that they do not expect, and this is obvious in the very different applications of love in different books. However, one common idea about the relationship between love, suffering, and wisdom, can be argued for based off the ancient texts that we read. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Antigone, and The Tale of Genji, love is used as a vehicle for wisdom through suffering and loss.
In this global era of evolving civilization, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the fascinating fact about love. Love is a feeling of intimacy, warmth, and attachment. Love is inevitable and it plays a vital role in human life as Janie uses her experience with the pear tree to compare each of her relationships, but it is not until Tea Cake that she finds “a bee to her bloom.” (106).
As the beginning of life starts all children have some caretaker. Janie is a teenage girl and like any is young and naive. In this case for Janie her Nanny looks after her as a loving family member, but this love does not exactly communicate correctly between them. Nanny clearly wants Janie to have a better life, as she explains with her past in slavery. The aspirations she wishes to have is put towards Janie. But the ideals conflict as Nanny’s outlook of love battles Janie's teenage aspirations. Only later does Janie understand of why
There exists no power as inexplicable as that of love. Love cannot be described in a traditional fashion; it is something that must be experienced in order for one to truly grasp its full enormity. It is the one emotion that can lead human beings to perform acts they are not usually capable of and to make sacrifices with no thought of the outcome or repercussions. Though love is full of unanswered questions and indescribable emotions, one of the most mystifying aspects of love is its timeless nature. Love is the one emotion, unlike superficial sentiments such as lust or jealousy, which can survive for years, or even generations. In the novel The Gargoyle, the author, Andrew Davidson, explores the idea of eternal love between two people,
According to the book, this woman gave birth to a baby which was a symbol of embarrassment and humiliation not only for the villagers but for all the family. Even though this baby did not have any notion of what was going on, she was still a victim of Chinese norms. This baby also became forgotten being that she was not given the opportunity to be alive. Kingston’s aunt decision of killing the baby, had to do greatly with the fact that she was girl. As the book states “it was probably a girl; there is some hope for forgiveness for boys”. Without any doubt, if the baby was given the opportunity to live she would have been mistreated and condemned all her life. She would not have had the opportunity to developed her own identity or raise her “own voice”.
Love makes us do crazy things. It makes us become people we never thought we were. Love gives us an ultimatum about our life. Love is a powerful bond and wicked curse. When we love, we love hard. We will do anything for love and to be loved. In “My Sister’s Marriage,” Cynthia Marshall Rich presents the different views of love upon similar yet different characters. Two sisters, who share a loving yet manipulative Father show the different ways love affects us. Sarah-Ann and Olive have many similar and different relationships with love, their dreams, and their traits.
In the book, The Girl Who Drank The Moon, by Kelly Barnhill, the author writes about how love can take you on dangerous journeys. The book is about a girl named Luna who got enmagicked by moonlight. In the book there is a town called Protectorate who sacrifices a baby every year to the witch, one year the witch feed a girl moonlight causing her to gain magic powers. Xan decided to take in the baby and name it Luna, but when she turns thirteen, Xan will die. The theme of this story is love is powerful enough to bring love on powerful journeys. Antain is a citizen of the Protectorate and finds out that he’ll have to sacrifice his baby this year. He doesn’t want his family to break apart, so decides to go on a dangerous journey to kill
In T. Coraghessan Boyle’s story “The Love of My Life,” it centers around the teenage relationship of Jeremy and China who claim to be in love with each other. Their relationship; however, is centered around what a relationship is like in movies and based off of physical attraction to each other as well as being naive to what real love is. The relationship between the two is great until they encounter their first real obstacle in the relationship when China becomes pregnant. The egocentric nature of both characters takes over and there begins to be cracks within the relationship. Now they face the reality of becoming parents and they blame each other for the mistake instead of accepting their role in the situation. The love between the two
The time periods that each text is set in varies and it is therefore interesting to note that this does not change the fundamentals, we are prepared to make sacrifices for love. All the characters were forced by restrictions of the time to make difficult decisions and in these cases they were willing to give their lives, either physically or emotionally, for their love. It shows the extremity of love, that it is worth more to these literary